Many people have requested a one-page summary of the new book. This one is under 400 words. [Slightly revised 8 June 2010.]

Roy Sablosky: NO ONE BELIEVES IN GOD (second draft, November 2009)

It’s not about belief

That religion has to do with beliefs becomes implausible when you look at the behaviors it evokes. For example:

Their “beliefs” challenged, people are often enraged, as if you had threatened not their opinions but their safety.

One joins a group, not its beliefs. Self-described Catholics may differ profoundly with their church elders on important issues; they are Catholics despite their beliefs.

Notoriously, church elders routinely flout the “beliefs” they most fervently espouse.

Claims of belief are implausible where the tenet in question is nonsensical.

Religious propositions are incoherent. (This is probably by design. A slogan is catchier if no one knows what it means.) In the sentence “Jesus loves you” for example, both the subject and the verb are impossible to characterize or observe. Such a statement is perfectly empty: it is a pseudo-proposition.

Since they are without meaning, religious statements can be neither meant nor believed. Thomas Jefferson: “I suppose belief to be the assent of the mind to an intelligible proposition.” Ludwig Wittgenstein: “one cannot mean a senseless series of words.”

Therefore, no one really believes in the teachings of any prophet or the existence of any god. It cannot be done. It does not happen. People who think they are doing it are mistaken.

Religion is made of memes plus authoritarianism

Religious “beliefs” are memes. Just like germs, they are contagious; and just like germs they evolve through natural selection. The religious memes circulating now have evolved over thousands of years to be very, very good at what they do.

People are naturally deferential to authority figures.

Authority and memetic self-replication combine to form religion.

What we should do

Admit no religious exceptions to any legislation. A few examples:

End all tax breaks (that is: subsidies) for religious organizations and their personnel.

Eliminate chaplaincy programs at all levels of government, including the armed services.

Remove legislative impediments to abortion and birth control.

Outlaw the teaching of antediluvian codswallop in public school.

Government should ratify only civil unions, not “marriages”. Anyone willing and competent to sign such a contract should be allowed to.

Revise the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. No proposal having a religious rationale or using religious terminology should become a law.